MatchLogic arms advertisers, agencies

Just more than a year ago, MatchLogic was an independent Internet services company with a reputation for cache-busting.

With its TrueCount software, it unraveled the secret to counting ad impressions stored on proxy servers, giving advertisers more accurate campaign results.

Today the Westminster, Colo.-based company is a subsidiary of Excite, recently bought by @Home, a high-speed Internet service. But the change in ownership hasn't shifted MatchLogic's focus. It has more than 60 clients, ranging from General Motors Corp.'s Cyberworks to Dell Computer Corp., AT&T Corp. and Grey Interactive.

57 MILLION PROFILES

It also has 57 million anonymous user profiles, which it's figuring out how to use for database marketing, says new MatchLogic President Mitchell Bennett.

MatchLogic got the profiles by analyzing Web site traffic, mainly from Excite and its sites. Its TrueSelect software then uses the anonymous profiles to deliver ads on the Web depending on the user's age, gender, income and other variables.

"The Internet isn't about good creative, it's about systems engineering," Mr. Bennett says. "We look to work with advertisers and agencies. Agencies still do buys, still do creative and still control branding."

One role MatchLogic isn't given full credit for is developing e-mail campaigns for its clients, Mr. Bennett adds. MatchLogic kicked off an opt-in e-mail marketing program last year called DeliverE, collecting e-mails from users who agreed to receive direct-mail offers.

Brian Sroub, VP-marketing for Beyond.com Corp., a Sunnyvale, Calif., Web-based software retailer, used MatchLogic's e-mail services and is pleased with the results.

"MatchLogic does a test mailing on your offers, evaluates the highest response rates and skews the larger mailing to people like those who responded," he says.

Thanks to MatchLogic, Mr. Sroub says, he's getting better results from e-mail marketing than Web banners. "We [spend] a smaller percentage of our ad budget on banners than even six months ago," he says, using TV for branding and e-mail for targeting.

NETGRAVITY ALLIANCE

MatchLogic also has an alliance with NetGravity to integrate each others' products. MatchLogic's database works with sites using the NetGravity advertising server.

Patrick Coyle, director of online media for Agency.com, New York, says MatchLogic actually sold his agency on using NetGravity because the two systems can work together so well.

"We'll be able to use NetGravity, which is almost a mission-critical ad-serving system, with the best data profiling [from MatchLogic], which is kind of cool," Mr. Coyle says.

MatchLogic is also working on its serving capabilities through SpeedSelect, a service announced in December that determines users' access speed before delivering a banner they can view.

"Based on their access speed, you can deliver the richest possible media," Mr. Bennett says, adding that richer media can mean higher click-throughs.

"This gives buyers all our current capabilities, from narrow- band to broadband," he adds, putting MatchLogic in good shape for the future.

In December, MatchLogic was at the Western Cable Show announcing a new service called @tlantis that will further explore broadband. The service will measure interactive cable TV, just as it currently tracks and measures results of Web advertising.

"The Internet is changing from an e-commerce standpoint, moving toward a capability of measuring against a transaction," Mr. Bennett says of MatchLogic's changing role. "[Web advertising] was funded for branding and now it's moving into retaining customers."